Thursday, December 30, 2010

A gravity-defying illusion has won the 2010 Best Illusion of the Year Contest, held yesterday in Naples, Florida.

The visual trick involves a 3D construction of four slopes that appear to extend downwards away from a common centre (see video). When wooden balls are placed on the slopes, however, they bizarrely roll upwards as if a magnet is pulling them.

But the "Impossible Motion" illusion, created by Kokichi Sugihara of the Meiji Institute for Advanced Study of Mathematical Sciences in Kawasaki, Japan, is soon dispelled when it's viewed from a different perspective – each slope is actually sloping downwards towards a common centre.

We're fooled because we make the assumption that each supporting column of the object is vertical, and that the longest column in the centre is the highest. But in reality, the columns and slopes are angled to create the illusion.

Friday, December 17, 2010

I mean, c'(mons?): Who's actually looking at (and/or licking on) 12-year-old pussy? (By the way: unless I've totally spaced out anatomy 101, it's not the "vagina," per se, on which is inflicted and which must endure the application of liquid wax; it's the "Mons pubis" (aka, Mons veneris, aka, "pussy") from which sprouts the offending foliage, nest paw.)

12 Year Olds Getting Bikini Waxes: Why Do Women Do Such Terrible Things to Their Vaginas?By Jennifer ArmstrongPouring burning wax onto their genitals has become the norm for many women. Why?

When a Cosmo headline promises to help readers get a “sexy vagina,” you know we’ve gone wrong somewhere. Here, all this time, we’d thought that if we had just one inch of sexy on ourselves, it resided in our sex organs. We figured maybe, just maybe, the place where their penises go might turn men on. We thought perhaps the millions of males who paused their VHS tapes of the 1992 movie Basic Instinct at a certain moment when Sharon Stone uncrosses her legs for all the world to see a flash of her goods -- and the millions more who continue to search for this screen-shot online to this day -- might have been predisposed to like pussy. (Then again, that is a hot white mini-dress she wears; maybe they just appreciate the simplicity of the design.) What we’re saying is we didn’t realize it could be such a chore to sex up the part of us that performs the sex.

Oops, take that back: We did realize it. We’ve realized it since the late ’90s, when suddenly it wasn’t just porn stars who found it an every-day necessity to hire a lady to pour hot wax onto their genitals, then rip it allll off, to, you know, keep things tidy down there. Organized. Sexy. In fact, a startling number of us pledged complicity to this trend -- known by the seductive term Brazilian bikini wax -- for something so painful, given that, unlike porn stars and swimsuit models, we couldn’t even claim it as a tax write-off. Among women in American urban centers, this has even become the norm, as routine as a manicure-pedicure or highlights, more routine than a dentist appointment. It is no mere biannual affair, after all. Keeping your honeypot sexy takes dedication, darling.

The question: Why do we do this? And does every rip of the wax take a little bit of our feminism with it?

Find out for your very selves on Alternet, right now. (Okay, I'll admit it: I saw a link to this on FB, and thought: Google bait. This was just a cheap ploy for GOOGLE hits. So sue me...)

Sunday, December 12, 2010

Success finally came when the LAST Mrs./Dr./Prof. Woody declared one evening in January, 1994, that she had by then endured close to 15 years of my filthy habit and that, unless I wanted to move into a cave, she was gonna insist--for her OWN sake--that I stop. There not having been at the time very many, desirable--and, crucially, UN-occupied--caves in the Baton Rouge area, I acceded to her request and submitted to hypnosis.

At the time, I had been a "pack-a-day" (at LEAST) smoker for close to 35 years. My parents were BOTH tobacco users (and it eventually killed 'em both, though after the events related here), I had tried all manner of expedients to stop, on too many occasions to recount. I knew it was NECESSARY for me to stop, not only for the sake of L M/D/P W, but for my own. My office at the time was on the third-floor of the College building, and I couldn't by then climb all FOUR flights of stairs without stopping for breath. I was 46. Not good.

I had my first session on or about January 24, 1994, and my last session--and my LAST tobacco product--Jan. 31 that same year. It'll be 17 years next month (though, sadly, the L-M/D/P-W and I split up a few years later, I am still tobacco-free--thanks, Sweetie!~).

The Deal Is...

Reconsidered: I don't know what get's you off, but I need a venue in which to place stuff which is funny--i.e., embarrassing, or painful, or hurtful to the political/cultural opposition, and/or otherwise testing the inner and outer boundaries of "taste." I go for "sardonic," and "ironic," and even "sarcastic."

As well as stuff that makes even an old, beat-up, wore-out, skeptical, agnostic, dilligaf, cynical stoner say "wow," or its cognates...

I Disclaim Thee, I Disclaim Thee...

The images on this site have been harvested on the Internet. The proprietor of this site merely reproduces them, under Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law, the "fair use" convention. This site is maintained solely for the entertainment of such audiences as it may attract. I have not always done 'due diligence' in attributing the sources of these entertaining images; for this, and to those I have skimped in acknowledging, I apologize.